I'd be interested in reading about that.

You don't have to be particularly good, you just have to come up with a neat gimmick or idea. Just make-up something crazy. It doesn't even have to make sense. I'll give it a go: make a game about baby chickens who who have accidentally consumed explosive ball bearings. They are too stuffed to move, so you must use a large magnet to move them back into their pen. However, if a chick touches another chick, it'll explode, so you have to be careful! Call it "Chick Magnet".

{"name":"BLOC!_sw.jpg","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/7\/c\/7c627cb15313ec038ed148be6cd17e3d.jpg","w":640,"h":480,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/7\/c\/7c627cb15313ec038ed148be6cd17e3d"}

Just curious, where'd you get the picture of the woman for the background?

I will try to find time to start posting about it tonight.

You're referring to game design. I.e., coming up with a game idea that would be fun. That I may not be terrible at, but it looks like you're much better at it. As with a lot of other people, my ideas are too complex for my development skills. Of course, the real problem is that my game development skills are nil. I don't really comprehend basic collision detection and resolution properly, let alone more fancy concepts. I was naturally good at math in high school, but I only had a basic math class in college and haven't been practicing maths for over a decade now so I've pretty much lost all of it. I struggle to remember parts of the 12x12 times table! In theory I should be able to learn the basic, even if I just have to copy-paste the logic, but I usually don't get that far either because I'm also useless at art and sound, and struggle to turn the idea in my head into code and pixels on the screen...

That is literally a brilliant game idea. Did you seriously just think of that?

1. Develop it into a mobile game.
2. Upload it to the mobile game stores with ads (or a $3 in-game purchase item to remove them).
3.
4. Profit.

That's his wife.

You are literally a game design god. That or you're ripping off existing ideas that I don't know about.

Also your advice is sound. That's sort of what I set out to do with my Tetris clone. I was aiming quite small, and I was making good progress with it until I ran into a collision bug, and then I discovered memory leaks, and I couldn't figure out the memory leaks. I didn't want to keep going and make the leaks worse until I figured out the leaks so development stalled and hasn't really been touched in 2 months.

It's now been so long I barely remember the original issues that lead me to the memory leaks, but here's one of the progress videos I posted (I can't remember if I posted these on A.cc already, but I think I did on one of the planned speedhack threads back in December or January):

That particular issue appears to be fixed, but the memory leaking is the main issue I have to contend with now. Another issue is input lag. I currently have the game coded to use hjkl as arrow keys because I'm a vi fanboy, but I don't think that should account for the lag. I must have issues with my game loop to cause it. In any case, one bug at a time...

I've done many of these things before. The only things in that list that I haven't accomplished properly is collision detection and sound (and literally releasing a game, though I manage releases for my company's software so the logistics I know, just not the actually developing a game to release ).

My Tetris clone has collision detection, but it's probably not "ideal", and I resorted to a tile-based design to keep it simple. The idea was start simple and eventually make it more complicated. Once I had the tile-based game working properly converting it to pixel-based was going to be one of the future goals. I also managed to fix a bug in the collision detection for "Intern's Quest" many years ago (which was a project I undertook with Sam H. for a university course), but Sam gets the credit for actually implementing the collision detection. I wouldn't say I understood it per se.

As for sound, see the audio thread. I attempted it a few months ago too, but I couldn't figure it out. I might have figured out how to get some sounds played, but not played as freely as I wanted. My ultimate goal at the time was actually generating sounds computationally, but I wasn't able to figure out how.

I started on a couple of simple libraries for doing animations in Allegro 4 (al4anim; a simple solution I developed in response to a thread years ago) and Allegro 5 (libal5poly, which was developed as part of my incomplete Santa Hack entry a few years back). The latter of which I intended to expand into a high-level game library or engine, but naturally lack the experience or expertise to develop such a thing.

I've also been a career programmer/analyst for ~11 years so business software I'm quite familiar with. It's mostly the parts of game programming that require math or domain knowledge where I get stuck.

I am using valgrind (which is why I know there are leaks at all), but my valgrind fu is not very strong apparently. It looks like some of the memory is leaked by the video drivers or Allegro, but I'm not sure. With a bit of poor man's debugging I think I've identified at least two game objects that are also leaking somehow that I need to figure out. This debugging will likely end up being my first blog post if I can find the strength.

I haven't actually attempted to diagnose the issue yet since I have more serious bugs to worry about first. It could be something else entirely. The game itself seems to run pretty smoothly, but input is pretty choppy. Eventually I think I'll end up putting the repo up either my Web site or GitHub so others will be able to see what I'm doing wrong if I can't.. I prefer to do so on my own Web site so it's a bit more private since it's not really something I'm proud of [yet] nor ready to broadcast. Having a mechanism to share the code though is desirable. Basically I'm thinking of an "unlisted" repo where anybody can access it, but if you simple navigate to my site or profile you won't see it unless you navigate directly to the link. I also haven't applied licensing to it yet (but it'll most likely fall under GPLv2+ or v3+).

Collision detection isn't difficult once you understand the math behind it. It's just determining whether two objects overlap. Usually that's represented by some shape, like a rectangle (bounding box collision) or a circle (circle-based or distance-based collision). Of course, there's more than just rectangles and circles, but you can solve the majority of collision problems using just those two shapes. I encourage you to look online for code examples of collision detection, and maybe spruce up on algebra or the likes if you need a refresher.

As for sound, that's specific to your library of choice (whereas math is library and language agnostic). A one-size-fits-all audio solution can be tough. Make it really simple to use and people will complain that it's too restrictive. Alternatively, make it too "loose" where it can be applied to almost any problem, and people will complain that it's too convoluted to use. The docs and the forum are your only hope in this regard.

There is certainly a lot of math that goes into making a game. But you can do a lot with a surprisingly small amount of math knowledge. Besides, you don't need to have the best math skills to make a fun game. Take "Flappy Bird" for example. That game was insanely popular a year or so ago (maybe longer now), yet it was stupidly simple! The whole game was just a twist on the endless runner genre. But instead of running, you had to tap the screen to have a bird flap its wings. The main game-play gimmick was avoiding obstacles as you bob up and down while flapping. You could probably recreate that experience with minimal math skills. For collision detection, just use axis-aligned bounding boxes (AABB collision). All you need to do for AABB collision is check the sides of a pair of rectangles for an overlap. The rest of the game is just spawning obstacles off-screen, and then moving them into view. Oh and detecting user input to make the bird flap, but that's simple, too. So even with basic math skills, it is possible to create fun, and sometimes addicting, games.

Here is a demo of the rectangle game I suggested (sans sounds). Move with the arrow keys (you might have to click on the game area for the frame to accept your key presses). As an optional exercise, think of some ways to improve the demo. What would make it more enjoyable to play? What are some ways existing features could be polished? How might you build upon it?

I'd prefer GitHub, but I can understand wanting to keep it private. I'd be interested in checking it out if you decide to make the repo available.

Wow, how neat that your passion project received a blessing from Edgar, and that it became popular enough to warrant a successor! Any plans for a Deluxe Pacman 3?

How cool! I've heard good things about Ball Pythons, but have not had the chance to be around one. I used to catch a lot of snakes as a kid, but my interest in them waned in my teen years (I guess the novelty just wore off). I remember my neighbor being deathly afraid of them. I remember her calling me over a few times to remove snakes from her yard. They were totally harmless and tiny garter/garden snakes, but she wanted nothing to do with them.

Yeah, I used to go to a graveyard as a teen in the '70s and catch garter snakes. One time we captured about 27 of them and brought them back to this housing units we were living int and let them all loose. Good times.

I have been toying with the idea. My game, mainly DP1 has been downloaded literally millions of times (I am not exaggerating), mainly in South America, so I would love to add in language support for them too. I have a project I barely got started that was called Deluxe Pacman 3, but then I renamed it to...

{"name":"611347","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/e\/7\/e7b13d3cafae401da4fb2f5c1ee3b654.png","w":1920,"h":1080,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/e\/7\/e7b13d3cafae401da4fb2f5c1ee3b654"}

It does seem like Neil would benefit from developing a Web-based DP game (though I can't be sure what affect that would have on donations). While developing a Web site I think would be a waste of your time, developing a DP game in JavaScript/HTML5 might be well worth your time. It could expand your mind, give you a new challenge and something fun to try, and ultimately result in a game that is accessible to most of the world (with sufficiently fast computers).

Append:

And a secondary objective could be making it mobile-friendly (but not until you have a desktop version polished!).

I've never gotten a laptop of any vintage. Desktops are cheaper, easier to upgrade, and you can't pwnt PC n00bs from the couch.

My desktop is probably close to 7 years old, and it shows. I'm definitely in need of upgrading the GPU and increasing memory, but it seems my motherboard doesn't support the latest GPU interfaces so unfortunately I can't just upgrade one or two things and pretty much will end up replacing everything except for maybe the case, power supply, and hard drive.

I can't afford to do that so for now I deal with it. Fortunately, the main game that I enjoy playing mostly runs smoothly on this hardware still so it's not so bad.

Mind you, I really need to reformat the system and reinstall the OS because this one has several frustrating issues that I don't think I can solve.

Append:

Here's the Tetris-clone repo: Tetrist on Github. I haven't had time to blog about it yet. But perhaps somebody will get curious and solve the memory leaks for me. The memory-leaks branch is sort of the latest state, but develop is also more up-to-date than master.

I'm in the same boat as bamccaig. Never owned a laptop, always used a desktop built by myself.

My desktop is probably as old as bam's as well. A 3 core AMD CPU with a GTX650 GPU and 12G of RAM.

When I originally built it, I done some research from sites like Tom's Hardware on getting the best bang for the buck, with a motherboard that allowed easy overclocking if needed etc. The research was worthwhile as the system has lasted a long time now. Probably since 2010 or so, I forget now. I originally had a GTX240 and I think 4G RAM in it and later upgraded the RAM and GPU.

I want to upgrade it again, but the GPU won't change this time as they are insanely high priced. The GTX650 cost me $100 a few years ago and is now more than double that, which is crazy, so an upgrade for that isn't in the cards for me.

I wouldn't mind grabbing a laptop for my wife though and may look into one someday for her, but not for me. I'm a desktop man all the way. I could never get used to more compact keyboards, I wouldn't be able to type fast at all with them.

As far as what I bought for myself, I have a Chromebook for my laptop needs. Aside from not having a network port, it actually fills all my needs I would ever want from a laptop. Though the reason I needed the network port recently, it wouldn't have helped because I needed to install some software on it to allow me to configure something, and it needed one of the big three OSes to run.

Technically, I do have access to a Windows laptop, but when I was done using it for the network port it had... the screen started acting up. Something that for a desktop, at minimal, I would have to buy a new cable between the monitor and the computer, and at worse, buy a new monitor.

BTW, I love my new networking equipment. I have major power to do crazy stuff that I'm not sure you could do with custom firmware like DD-WRT.

Ha, I wonder how much it would cost to ship a laptop to Canada.

Shred the hard drives and sell the laptops all on E-bay for like $50 or $100 plus shipping. Could make like $150 or $300 or better.